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Okay, so I had planned on doing a video today, but then I realized that pretty much all of my clothing that isn’t black is currently in the laundry, and I don’t have an alternate backdrop for the studio I film in. If I were to film in my comfy black sweater, you’d see nothing but a floating head and a lot of hair. This lead to the realization that if I waited until it was done, then it would be really late, and no one would see the video. So you get another blog post, yay! And I put on a ton of makeup (before said realization) for no reason at all, yay!

Someone sent me an anonymous request (via my Survey Monkey!) to do a video or blog post about the debate that rages regarding pubic hair.

I’ve been doing some variation of hair removal for over a decade now. When I was a teenager, and I was still using pads, I would often trim my pubic hair while sitting on the toilet, with a pair of scissors. When I had my period, I would often pass clots of blood and tissue, and they would sometimes get tangled in my pubic hair. I reasoned that it would be easier to clean up during my period if the hair wasn’t quite so long.

Then I read an article in a teen magazine. A girl had written in, saying that she was nervous about wearing a bathing suit in front of boys because her pubic hair would peek out the sides of her swimsuit bottoms. She was actually given really good advice. She was told not to worry about it, and that any boys who made fun of her for it were just immature. But she was also told that if it really made her nervous and she wanted to, she could use the same razor that she used on her legs to clean up the sides of her pubic hair.

I was about to start doing swim lessons in high school, and it was a co-ed class. Suddenly, I was nervous about my pubic hair showing on the sides of my bathing suit. So I started shaving the sides of my pubic hair. I kept doing this for years: trimming the long stuff near my labia, and shaving the sides when I knew I was going to be in a swimsuit.

I am pretty sure that my initial decision to actually go ahead and shave all of my pubic hair was out of curiosity. I had read about it in ladies magazines (yes, again, my beauty and hygiene regimen was influenced by someone else having issues about their body), I had heard friends talk about it, and I was curious what it would feel like. So I took an extra long shower and decided to shave it all off. My (now ex) husband really liked it, and asked me to keep doing it.

It felt weird, but it didn’t feel more weird than the sensation after shaving my legs. I was really aware of the fact that my entire vaginal area felt different for a couple of days afterwards. And then the hair started to grow back. It itched. It was prickly. Some of the hair had trouble breaking back through the skin, so I had ingrown hairs, and not only did those itch too, but I had to take a pair of tweezers to my skin to get them out. Even weirder though, was that the hair that grew back in was different. Before I shaved my pubic hair, it had been curly and kind of rough. Now, much like the hair on my head, it was straight and smooth. I let it grow out a little more, but now that it was growing differently, it became hard to have sex without the hair being pulled (and sometimes, even pulled out).

So I continued shaving and letting it grow out and repeating the process. I’ve also waxed the hair, and I find I actually prefer to do that over shaving it. I would prefer to just let it be, but unfortunately, I can’t, unless I want to have pain during sex.

I didn’t intend on giving the personal history of my pubic hair, but there you go, I suppose.

Now let’s talk about the pros and cons of removing your pubic hair. This list goes for anyone who is considering removing it, whether you identify as male, female, or any other gender.

Pros:

Some people think it feels better to have no hair on their genitals.

Long history! People have been doing it since the days of Ancient Greece and Egypt.

No stress about pubic hair peeking out of your bathing suit, if that’s the kind of thing you stress about.

Pubic lice? Not a problem. You’ve destroyed their natural environment.

Some people have a preference for minimal body hair.

Cons:

Razor burn

Ingrown hairs

Awkward to actually do by yourself

Creates microscopic tears in the skin

Increased risk of contracting an STI due to the microscopic tears (they’re open wounds!)

Some loss of sensitivity in the area (those hairs have nerve endings in the follicles)

Increased friction between your skin and your clothing.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you. Hair in your pubic area isn’t gross, or unhygienic. It has a purpose. It’s also okay to remove it, but you have to take extra precautions with preventing infections. Above all, don’t do it if you’re just worried about someone telling you that you should remove it. It is your body. Do with it what you want.